I hope you found the last installment (purposes of cross-examination) helpful! Of course, understanding what you should aim to accomplish in CX is crucial to actually being effective in your rounds — but head knowledge means nothing unless you can actually implement it. The first question of implementation is this: how should you conduct yourself in cross-ex?
Continue reading “Mechanics of Cross X – Asking and Answering Questions by: Samuel Hand”
What if we spoke less and listened more? It seems like a silly question to ask in the context of competitive speech and debate, but fortunately for us, in debate it includes a built-in Q&A segment after each constructive speech. Debate is often thought of in terms of argument, counterargument, counter-counterargument, and so on — and it is therefore easy to overlook those three minutes of Q&A after each constructive. However, those six (for LD) or twelve (for TP) minutes may be more important than any speech in the round…
Continue reading “Purposes of Cross Examination by: Samuel Hand”
The Speech and Debate season is officially started - clubs have begun to meet, students are meeting with their coaches, preparations for the upcoming season are underway, and while competitions may seem far, far away to you right now, these next couple of months are actually critical time for the students who arrive at that first competition invested and ready. So, how to begin? Where to start? How do you decide what events you are going to do?
Kristi Eskelund has been coaching students a long time! She has seen categories come and go. In this article, she explores the new 2018-2019 NCFCA category of Oratorical...
If you've taken a nice hard look at the schedule for the NCFCA National Championship this year, you know that the pace of the tournament is a LOT slower than usual for competitors. More time is built in between rounds. Two days are short days of competition. Including Moot Court, the tournament will last for six days. In my tenure, this is an uprecedented pace, and it is one you should definitely factor into your own personal approach for stamina and optimum performance.
I've been involved with my home school speech league for ten years. Before that, I taught public school where I coached in a different league. Before THAT, I competed myself in yet another league. All of those leagues have operated with rules. Honestly, no one really loves rules. We understand the importance of them in maintaining a level playing field, but we don't really love them. Our human nature longs to kick against them and give ourselves more room. And when we do, we are in error. Becoming hyper sensitive to rules and every potential violation of those rules is the equal but opposite error. It creates a litigious environment where we are on the look-out for rules violators we can haul off to the compliance team to be punished. There are some dangerous harms in leaning to that side of the balance...
We write a lot of them as parents (or alumni). Competitors get an envelope of them after every speech and debate tournament. And sometimes we have more to say about the ballots than we take away from the ballots! What are these ballots, and how can both judges and competitors use the ballots to best effect during the competition season?
Thor is known for his hammer. He wields it well and it obeys his every whim. He owns it. It is intrinsic almost to his persona and identity. Comedic timing, and the successful application of it, similarly marks the skilled humorist. But just like nobody is able to tell Thor exactly how to use his hammer, no one is able to tell a would-be humorist exactly what to do with timing either. I can describe the shape of it, yes, but what you do with it....well, that is what will make you funny - or not!
The Ancient Greek philosophers spent their time observing the world around them and thinking about how and why things worked in our world. When they came to some insight, they wrote down their thoughts. Most of you have probably begun to study some of those thoughts. And, it might be worth knowing that those ancient philosophers had thoughts about what makes good communication work, too.
“Expressiveness” is one of those words on the ballot….and one that can mean quite a lot of different things. Teasing out some of those many meanings can go a long way toward helping you be more of all those different things in any kind of speech.
Continue reading “Practical Tips for Becoming a More Expressive Speaker”
Have you had your first tournament yet? We have. In my region, we had some young competitors who launched right to the top of the field at this first competition of the year. I spoke to one of the dads and asked if it was a surprise to his family that his daughter broke in multiple events - including debate - while two older, more seasoned brothers did not. He answered, "Not to me."
"Really?" I replied.
"No. She's been working on her speeches since last June. The boys were still putting theirs together on the way here."
That situation is NOT uncommon. But I can assure you that all that effort spent getting ready for the first tournament scored some BIG at-large points or check marks for those competitors that came prepared and invested in their material.
So is it too late for that? Absolutely not...
"Woe! Woe to me! I have to do my funny piece after a tragedy!?"
I hear it all the time.... Students doing dramatic material bemoan the fact that funny wins. Students doing funny material hate walking into a room where judges are wiping away tears. If Dramatic Interpretation and Humorous Interpretation are separated into different rooms, the conflict doesn't occur, but I maintain that there is room for every place on the emotional spectrum in Open Interpretation...
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